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Rennie stole from my last social worker’s office: The kind of shit they usually do with henna on the big day, then leave on until you wear ’em off playing unpaid workhorse for your hubby’s family, long after the roast lamb’s all been eaten and the band’s gone home to sleep.
    I remember how the tattoo artist laughed when I showed him the ripped-out page I wanted him to copy them from. Smirking:
    â€œGuess you can kiss your day-job ambitions pretty much goodbye with this one, huh?”
    And I just smiled back, ever so slightly. Thinking:
    Yeah, that idea would probably scare me too, if I’d ever actually had a day job.
    Outside the Caf Shack window, it was just another post- ozone-depletion February in Toronto—equal parts frigid and uncertain, pedestrians eddying to and fro outside like ghosts beneath a livid, parboiled sky. Streets slick with yesterday’s slush, already turned to ice.
    Then I let my attention focus back inside the window frame, and realized the guy who’d been cruising me for the last few minutes—so overtly, he could’ve been wearing a big neon pink sign on his forehead—was actually somebody I knew, or used to. One of Jos’ regulars, back in the days; back when I was one glam, Iced-up little Goth girl and Jos was my main squeeze, Mr. Trent Reznor Superfly, all black eyeliner and free drugs to anybody who shared his musical tastes. Before Rennie finally followed my example, broke and ran from that pit we once both laughingly called “home,” turned up knocking at Jos’ and my apartment door, and we let him crash in that little room next to the iguana tank—the one with no shades on the window, no lock on the door, and nobody left unstoned enough to check who was going in and out, especially during one of our legendary three-day parties.
    Before Rennie got sick. And Jos went to jail.
    And I ended up in this limbo I’ve been living, every day-for-night since.
    I nodded at the chair next to me, and took another leisurely gander out the window—more than long enough for the guy to take the hint, and slide his skinny junkie ass down in it.
    â€œHey, Ro,” he said, in a tone he probably thought passed for cheerful. “Long time, man.” Then, small talk over: “You holding?”
    I tapped the ash. “Not here, I’m not.”
    He nodded, sniffed, coughed; a long, phlegmatic rattle. Shot me a begging glance from under his flip of barely-successful white-boy dreads.
    I sighed, and chugged the rest of my latte, letting the caffeine stretch me standing—an unseen chemical noose, just tight enough to make sure I didn’t shake.
    â€œMy place,” I told him. “Tag along, we’ll see what I can do. But don’t be obvious.”
    He nodded again. I paid, and left.
    As I crossed the street, he was already ten steps behind, like some gender-confused geisha. Trying to follow my advice, and failing miserably.
    * * *
    So: Back around the Tar Baby, through the sump, down the alley and up three flights of rusty metal steps, brain on automatic as I filtered out the ever-present hash reek from Number Two, the teeth-rattling Techno blast from Number Three-A. Key in the door, and into a former dance studio’s worth of dark, square space, lit only by the TV’s thin blue glare and an uncertain thread of light, seeping under three layers of Honest Ed’s thickest curtaining. A half-sprung La-Z-Boy with a remote on its arm—rescued one drunken night from somebody’s Annex curbside—sat angled near enough to the TV to cause serious optic damage. The only other furniture was Jos’ futon, a stained mattress lying half-made in the middle of the floor, its red knot of sheets rumpled like an open heart.
    I paused in front of the bathroom mirror to light some incense, the stick’s red tip writing faint haiku on my reflection, just before I blew it out. A rush of